The explosion of the energy storage market drives the rapid development of the energy storage battery industry

In today's life, solar products are everywhere. People use solar energy for cooking, solar water heaters, and so on. Solar products are everywhere. Of course, the most important thing is solar power generation, but the current technology does not make people use it well. solar energy generation. In 2018, the scale of grid-side energy storage applications broke out. According to statistics, as of the end of December 2018, the cumulative installed capacity of energy storage projects in operation in my country was 31.2GW. Currently, energy storage is facing a key point of commercialization. The explosion of the energy storage market has driven the rapid development of the energy storage battery industry, and a variety of battery technologies rely on their own characteristics to gain a foothold in the industry. According to incomplete statistics from the Zhongguancun Energy Storage Industry Technology Alliance (CNESA) project library, as of the end of December 2018, the cumulative installed capacity of energy storage projects in operation worldwide was 180.9GW, a year-on-year increase of 3%. Among them, electrochemical energy storage The cumulative installed capacity was 6.5GW, an increase of 121% year-on-year. Among the cumulative installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage, lithium-ion batteries accounted for 86%, sodium-sulfur batteries accounted for 6%, batteries accounted for 6%, flow batteries accounted for 1%, supercapacitors accounted for 0.1%, and other batteries accounted for 0.5%. Compared with power lithium batteries, energy storage applications pay more attention to high safety, long life, and low cost of batteries. So in the future, which battery technology is more suitable for the energy storage market? 1、SLA Battery The storage battery has a history of more than 160 years. Due to its mature technology, wide application range, high efficiency, and multiple cycles, the battery has become an important form of energy storage for peak and frequency modulation on the power generation side and peak shaving and valley filling on the user side. With the advancement of technology, the performance of traditional batteries is constantly improving. At present, lead-carbon batteries have gradually replaced traditional lead-acid batteries and become the main force in the battery energy storage market. However, compared with lithium-ion batteries, lead-carbon batteries have a short cycle life and insufficient energy density. In terms of overall performance, lead-carbon batteries are not yet capable of high-demand energy storage projects. 2、Lithium-Ion Battery Lithium-ion batteries have occupied a leading position in the electrochemical energy storage installed capacity in the energy storage market in recent years due to their high energy density, long service life, and wide applicable temperature range. According to statistics, among the newly installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage in the world in 2018, lithium-ion batteries almost dominate the world, accounting for 94%. However, the use of lithium-ion batteries for energy storage also has some natural disadvantages. First is the cost issue. The cost mentioned here is not the battery manufacturing cost, but the cost of electricity after the operation. Although the cost of lithium-ion batteries is declining, if the operation and maintenance are too frequent, especially in colder or hotter environments, separate air-conditioning, etc., will increase the cost of electricity. The second is the safety of lithium-ion batteries. After all, most energy storage systems are MW-class, and once a safety problem occurs, it will have a bad impact. Therefore, mainstream ternary lithium-ion batteries supporting electric vehicles are not suitable for energy storage systems. More companies choose relatively safe lithium iron phosphate batteries. Even so, it is necessary to improve the ability to prevent safety risks in BMS and other aspects to control the safety of the energy storage system. With the declining cost of lithium-ion batteries and the gradual maturity of energy storage application scenarios, the domestic and international lithium-ion battery energy storage markets are rapidly increasing, and the technological innovation of lithium-ion batteries is more dynamic than ever. In the foreseeable future, the large volume and high competitiveness of the lithium-ion battery industry will surely rapidly improve product performance and reduce system costs. Some of the problems faced by energy storage, such as safety issues, will also gradually follow the development of the lithium battery industry. Be resolved. Huang Shilin, vice chairman of Ningde Times New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., once said that Ningde Times will launch a long-cycle life lithium iron phosphate battery with a service life of more than 15 years and a single cycle of more than 15,000 times. This battery has strong environmental adaptability and can well meet the requirements of energy storage conditions. When this long-life lithium iron phosphate battery is on the market, it will be the most suitable lithium-ion battery technology route for the energy storage market. 3、Sodium ion battery It is understood that the research on sodium-ion batteries began around the 1980s. Due to the unsatisfactory electrochemical performance of the electrode materials designed at that time, the development of sodium-ion batteries was slow. Since 2010, based on the characteristics of sodium-ion batteries, R&D personnel have developed a series of positive and negative materials, which well demonstrate the high specific capacity and cycle stability of sodium-ion batteries, making sodium-ion batteries very good in terms of capacity and cycle life. Big improvement. Sodium nickel battery is a kind of sodium-ion battery. It has been reported that sodium-nickel batteries have the characteristics of high reliability, high safety, and long cycle life. Regarding lithium-ion batteries, sodium-nickel batteries have extremely high safety, and are non-combustible and non-explosive batteries; and sodium-nickel batteries are suitable for a wide temperature range, regardless of whether it is minus 40 degrees Celsius or minus 65 degrees Celsius. Stable product performance. Not only has high safety and long cycle life, but the storage capacity of sodium on the earth is much higher than that of lithium, making the cost of sodium-nickel batteries far lower than lithium-ion batteries. Earlier, industry experts predicted that sodium-nickel batteries will shine in the field of energy storage in the future. In April 2019, Zhejiang Anli Energy Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Chaowei Group and GE of the United States, invested in the construction of the first phase of the sodium-nickel battery project for nearly two years. According to reports, the battery cell has a specific energy of 135Wh/kg and a life span of 2 to 5 times that of a lithium-ion battery. After forming the system, the volume is more than 50% smaller than that of a lithium-ion battery system, and the life cycle cost is 50% lower than that of a lithium-ion battery. %. 4、Solid-state battery A solid-state battery is a battery that uses solid electrodes and solid electrolytes. It has high energy density, good safety performance, long cycle life, wide operating temperature range, and solid-state batteries are one of the important development directions of future battery technology. From the perspective of various performances, solid-state batteries are very suitable for use in the field of energy storage, but the current important factors hindering the deployment of solid-state batteries in the field of energy storage are technology and cost. In April of this year, Narada Power and Huineng Technology Co., Ltd. signed a pre-licensing agreement in Hangzhou. The two parties reached a preliminary consensus on the licensing of solid-state lithium battery production technology. It is expected to start operations after signing a formal cooperation agreement at the end of this year. Narada Power has actively deployed the solid-state battery field, and plans to build the first 1GWh-scale solid-state battery production line in China after successful technical verification. In the future, solid-state batteries will be highly anticipated in the energy storage market. I don't know whether Narada can overcome price difficulties through technology research and development, and inject new forces into the future energy storage market. 5、Water-based ion battery Based on the metal ion battery, the water-based ion battery replaces the combustible and high-cost organic electrolyte with a safer and easier to prepare water-based electrolyte. Since the first water-based lithium-ion battery was reported in 1994, the development and industrialization of water-based ion batteries have never stopped. The aqueous electrolyte has the following advantages: good safety performance, high ionic conductivity, low price, and easy availability, without the need for an anhydrous and oxygen-free environment, the battery can be produced, assembled, sealed, and other operations, which greatly reduces battery production And the cost of technology. The water-based sodium-ion battery developed and produced by Enli Energy prevents the flammability problem of the organic electrolyte of the lithium-ion battery, overcomes the high pollution and short life of the traditional water-based battery, and can meet the safety, long life, and low life of large-scale energy storage systems. Cost, environmental protection, and other requirements can provide a cheap and clean new system for large-scale energy storage. Although the application of aqueous electrolytes in sodium-ion batteries has great prospects. However, water-based sodium-ion batteries also have shortcomings, such as a narrow electrochemical window. The thermodynamic electrochemical window of water is only 1.23V. In order to prevent the electrolysis of water, the voltage of the water-based sodium-ion battery is about 1.5V, not more than 2V. Many sodium salt compounds have high solubility in water, and some even decompose in water, which further limits the choice of sodium materials. From the current technical point of view, water-based sodium-ion batteries are still niche. In addition, water-based Li, K, Zn, Mg, Ca, Al, and other new ion batteries are also in the development stage, and it will take time to reach the industrialization stage. Various battery technologies in the energy storage market are ultimately inseparable from the word safety. In 2018, the fire accidents of energy storage power stations at home and abroad, as well as the recent fire accidents of new energy vehicles, made all parties in the industry chain begin to realize the importance of safety, and the safety performance of energy storage batteries has also been raised to a new level. . High safety, long life, and low cost are the ideal systems for energy storage batteries. In the future, the energy storage market will develop multiple technologies together. Which one is the future? We will wait and see. It is believed that in a few years to decades, when the technology for human use of solar energy is mature, there will be an endless supply of energy for the use of society, and now researchers will work harder to study new technologies.